Steve Gibbons (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We recently learned of the collapse of REDgroup Retail, owner of the Borders and Angus and Robertson bookshops. This has led to a range of accusations that the government’s decision to retain Australia’s territorial copyright legislation is to blame. Former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr in a recent blog alleges that the retention of PIR, or parallel import restrictions, caused the publishing company Borders and Angus and Robertson to enter into administration.

Firstly, I have to say that I have never met Bob Carr, but I do have a healthy respect for his contribution in public life, in particular as a former Premier of New South Wales. But I have to take issue with some of the ridiculous comments he has made on the PIR issue. Regarding the Borders and Angus and Robertson situation, Mr Carr is dead wrong. Maintaining PIR has had no impact on the company, as many commentators in the publishing sector have acknowledged. It had more to do with the failure of that company to adjust and restructure its business to meet the challenges that all the printing and publishing sector is facing worldwide, the strong Australian dollar and the fact that Borders was purchased by a private equity with no expertise in running a business, which then relied on merchant bankers who knew nothing about book retailing.

As well, book retailing across the board has suffered a decline in the past year or so. Indeed Whitcoulls, the largest New Zealand publishing house, has also gone into receivership, and I understand Dymocks New Zealand has closed several stores. The point I am making is that New Zealand abolished parallel import restrictions in its publishing sector a decade ago and has had an open market environment since then. It obviously did not help Whitcoulls. Mr Carr stated:

This old-fashioned protectionism was designed to save McPherson’s, a struggling factory with 300 employees in Maryborough, Victoria …

He then went on to say:

But that’s protection for you: you shore up jobs in a clapped out factory that is doomed to close eventually, but you lose them in retail and service.

Wrong again, Mr Carr. The printing and publishing sector estimates that the introduction of a 30-day rule on PIRs in 1991 provided a strong stimulus to the Australian book printing industry. Australian publishers are printing more of their books locally to protect themselves against the parallel importation of cheaper overseas editions. According to the Printing Industries Association of Australia in submission No. 168 to the Productivity Commission, the increase in local printing activity is reflected in official statistics as well as in anecdotal feedback from the book printers about the importance of the current parallel importation rules to their production volumes and commercial viability. The increase in book production has led to more jobs, particularly in regional centres such as Maryborough in Victoria. The book printing industry estimates that the abolition of the 30-day rule could result in a loss of turnover of between $70 million and $80 million and the loss of between 1,400 and 1,600 jobs throughout Australia, including several hundred in book-printing related jobs. The impact of this loss of business would be felt not just by book printers themselves but also by associated industries such as paper manufacturers, suppliers of inks and other consumables, prepress service providers, bookbinders and local transport companies.

Mr Carr stated that McPherson’s in Maryborough was ‘a clapped out factory that is doomed to close’. Wrong again, Mr Carr. McPherson’s Printing Group happens to be among the most modern, innovative and advanced printing houses in Australia. It has invested around $23 million in its business in the last five years and is constantly changing to meet the demands and challenges affecting its industry. This company is the foundation stone of the small community of Maryborough’s already depressed economy.

The statistics paint a disturbing picture. There is 11 per cent unemployment in Maryborough; the state average is 5.4 per cent. Youth unemployment is reported to be in excess of 20 per cent. In the Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas, SEIFA, Central Goldfields shire rates 79 out of 79 local government areas in Victoria for disadvantage. Central Goldfields shire is highly disadvantaged across all four SEIFA indexes—advantage and disadvantage ratio, disadvantage, economic resources, and education and occupation. Central Goldfields shire ranks lowest in Victoria in average household income, average educational attainment and employment rates, significant long-term intergenerational unemployment and poverty.

The Vinson report of 2007, entitled Dropping off the edge, was commissioned by Jesuit Social Services in Melbourne. This report card on the Central Goldfields shire found that there was poor early childhood development, poor health, poor personal health, hunger, teenage pregnancy, and alcohol and drug abuse. It also found a strong link between socioeconomic disadvantage and poor health. Educational disadvantage included nonattendance at preschool, incomplete education, early school leaving and the lack of post-school qualifications. The Central Goldfields shire has lost around 400 jobs in the past six years, including at Nestle—140 jobs; Penny and Lang—80 jobs; Pyrenees Press—20 jobs; MidState Foods—10 jobs; Davis Poultry—80 jobs; Matisse Foods—40 jobs. Remember, Maryborough has a population of 8,000. Over a longer period, Maryborough has seen the loss of Phelans Homes, Maryborough Knitting Mills, and Patience and Nicholson, with the loss of hundreds of jobs.

McPherson’s Printing Group is currently the largest single industry in Maryborough and, as I said, has invested some $23 million in both its Maryborough plants over the past four or five years. It currently employ 300 to 350 people, including 33 junior and adult apprentices. Maryborough is indeed a depressed economy, with all the social challenges that accompany high levels of unemployment. The Central Goldfields Shire Council is doing a superb job in slowly turning this situation around and does not need the added pressure that Mr Carr’s inane comments have caused. Bob Carr and colleagues want to place the final nail in the Maryborough community’s coffin by shutting down a viable industry on the altar of free market economics, while being a director of one of the retailing chains that allegedly would benefit from changes to PIR regulations. To be fair, Mr Carr has always acknowledged his directorship with Dymocks, but this does not alter the fact. Indeed, Mr Carr would be well advised to avail himself of all of the facts before making any further comments on this matter.

Industry commentators have for some time pointed out the deficiencies in the REDgroup business model but those seeking removal of territorial copyright appear to blindly assume that REDgroup operated with perfect efficiency. Of course, they failed to acknowledge that its New Zealand operations have also gone under in a country where such copyright has already been abolished. The reality is that traditional business models in retail are changing, not least because of the advent of more internet shopping. It is up to Australian retailers to respond to this challenge, but the evidence to date is that they are falling behind. As the communications minister highlighted earlier this month, despite the potential of online retail to improve customer service and reduce logistics and other business costs, almost 60 per cent of Australian small businesses have yet to establish an online presence and almost 80 per cent are yet to offer online purchasing.

The state of the retail music industry provides ample evidence that, even though restrictions on imported CDs were removed some time ago on the recommendation of the Productivity Commission, 2010 saw a 32 per cent drop in the sale of CD albums, while the CD singles market collapsed by more than 94 per cent. This occurred while the digital music market as a whole increased by 32 per cent. The growth was all in online sales—a similar change in the business model that is facing the book retail industry. The removal of import restrictions is not about a few jobs in one printing factory in my electorate, as Mr Carr has suggested. Investment in book publishing would be likely to contract severely, with several small to medium publishers closing completely and a number of larger publishers downsizing. Skilled jobs will be lost not only in the printing and allied industries but also in editing, illustration, design, marketing and distribution. The number and variety of titles available in Australian bookshops as well as the number of bookshops would decrease, with independent bookshops worst hit. Market power would be concentrated in the large chain booksellers and discount department stores. It would be harder for new Australian authors to get published and dumped overseas books would undermine authors’ incomes. The risk appetite of Australian publishers for new Australian writing would reduce.

Exports of Australian writing would shrink and Australia’s carbon footprint would grow as more books were freighted in from overseas. We would be taking a wrecking ball to the Australian publishing industry, with no guarantee of significantly lower book prices or better availability of books to Australian consumers. Even the Productivity Commission acknowledged that book prices did not fall after New Zealand abolished its territorial copyright, and nor could it guarantee that any reduction in purchasing costs to Australian booksellers would be passed on to customers. There are no grounds for revisiting the government’s decision to retain the current rules on the parallel import of books. I note the Assistant Treasurer’s confirmation that the government will not be reopening this debate, and I welcome that.

I would like to turn to the matter of asylum seekers. Last week, during the private members debate, the member for Pearce spoke with her customary concern about the human trauma of those people who choose to seek refuge in this country from persecution. The member for Pearce, along with colleagues on the other side of the House, such as the member for McMillan and the former member for Kooyong, has been consistently calling for a more humane treatment of asylum seekers for several years. Last week in this House she made a special plea:

I … call on the government and the opposition to stop the political tactics and to end the escalating, hysterical rhetoric over who can produce the toughest policies, and for men and women of conscience in this place to call for the end of the politicisation of asylum policy.

I agree, and I believe that many of the comments that have been made about asylum seekers in the past few weeks have taken us over a line—a line that means we as politicians are failing to provide the moral and humanitarian leadership that the citizens of this country are entitled to expect from their elected representatives.

It is high time for us to stop using the plight of some of the world’s most desperate people for base political advantage. It is time for us to stop dehumanising people who arrived in this country by boat to claim political asylum. It is time to stop the xenophobic references to them as anonymous groups of foreigners, as boat people, as illegal immigrants or worse. It is time to stop the insinuations that all members of a particular faith or nationality are a threat to our Australian way of life.

This is the cynical, manipulative language of wartime propaganda. The depersonalisation of your foes plays a large part in the psychological conditioning of your soldiers. If they are allowed to see their enemy as a fellow human being with the same hopes and aspirations as them, they are much less likely to want to harm or even destroy him. It is the same depersonalisation that nurtures prejudice and persecution and provides a veil of respectability to the most abhorrent views about people from other faiths or countries. But it is not just through our careless use of language that we contribute to this xenophobia. Our silence, when it is used by others, encourages misinformation and reinforces the prejudice.

We only have to look at one of the public perceptions of asylum seekers to see the effect of this. An Amnesty International opinion poll in 2009 showed the majority of respondents believed that 80 per cent of asylum seekers in Australia had arrived by boat. In fact, in 2008-09 the true figure was 16 per cent. Even with the recent increases in arrivals, it is still less than half, with the majority continuing to arrive in Australia by air with a valid visa and then apply for onshore protection. We politicians have to take a large part of the responsibility for this misconception amongst our citizens. Our failure to correct the record at every opportunity, to contradict the radio shock jocks and the media pundits is a major contributor to perpetuating this misinformation.

People-trafficking, for whatever reason, is a repulsive business and we must take appropriate steps to prevent it occurring and punish those who seek to take advantage of genuine asylum seekers. But we have to stop demonising those who are legitimately seeking asylum in our country. As I said earlier, we have crossed the line in this debate on asylum and we have lost some of our basic humanity. In the conduct of this debate we have lost our empathy and our compassion. We glimpse it every now and then, but for the most part it is buried in the language of the debate and the incessant striving for political advantage.

There are times when we as politicians should be responsive to the public mood and there are times when we need to lead the public mood. If Arthur Calwell had consulted focus groups in the western suburbs of Sydney, this country would never have benefited from the wave of postwar European migration. If Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser had commissioned opinion polls about multiculturalism, this country would be much the poorer for it today. The asylum debate is one where we need to lead the country. As the member for Pearce has said, it is well and truly time for all political leaders to stop the politicking on asylum seekers.

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